Half Life Jillian Cantor (trending books to read .txt) 📖

while away the first month of summer. “The press will never find us there,” he tells me, with a satisfied grin. “And we can, at long last, get some rest.”

I GO BAREFOOT IN SAINT-RÉMY IN JUNE, OR SOMETIMES I wear sandals when we take the bicycles out and ride through the pastures, to Lac du Peiroou. And then, even though the water is freezing, Pierre insists on a swim, while I am content to dip my toes in at the edge.

Away from the city, Irène wiles away the days with her grand-père, and Pierre and I spend the days together, devoid of responsibilities. Pierre’s leg pains ease, and without the constant buzz and hum of the reporters, I should be able to breathe a little easier here too. But for some reason, I can’t. We have promised each other to clear our minds of work for the few weeks that we are here. We want to revel in the country air and Irène and each other. And it is only then, only after a week away, that I realize the truth of it: the tiredness, my aching body, my nausea, even all the way out here. I am pregnant again. For heaven’s sakes, how had I missed this in Paris? I count back . . . I must already be a few months along.

The realization should buoy me, but instead it sinks me, like I’ve dived into the cold waters of the lake and I can barely breathe.

I whisper my revelation to Pierre in the darkness of our bed that night.

He lowers his face to my belly, kisses me softly. I can feel the warmth of his lips, even through the fabric of my nightgown.

“I am terrified,” I admit to him. I think about last time, how the baby came much too soon, only five months along. Not a boy at all as Pierre had felt but a girl, perfectly formed, only born before she could breathe.

“No, mon amour,” Pierre whispers into my belly, his words tickling the fibers of my gown against my skin. “Everything is going to be exactly right this time, I can feel it.”

THE NEXT MORNING I AWAKE BEFORE DAWN. PIERRE IS ACTUALLY asleep, snoring softly beside me. His pains and his mind calm enough to rest out here.

I get up and dress in an old smock I’d brought for bike riding, and I go outside to take a walk to the lake. The sun rises, and the sky turns pink and purple. The world feels beautiful here, like a world that will never harm us again, and I inhale, letting the warm country air wash over me.

“Excuse me,” a young man calls out to me, and as I do not recognize him, I keep on walking. “Excuse me, Madame,” he calls out again, his French racked with a terrible American accent. I stop if only to get him to leave me alone. I need quiet. I need time for my mind to absorb what my body already understands. Six more months of worry and waiting and aching, and then if the world spins exactly as it should, and if there are no more accidents of science, another baby. Another baby. “I’ve heard the Curies are staying here for a holiday,” the man says. “Have you seen them? I hear they like to ride bicycles along here, and I’d really like to catch them for an interview.”

I reach up to touch my hair. It’s out of its usual bun, as I haven’t taken the time this morning. My feet are bare, and my smock is old and torn and ragged. He has no idea who I am, and somehow that thought gives me strength to remember exactly who I am. “I haven’t seen them,” I say. “You must be mistaken.”

I walk back toward the cottage, a smile creeping across my face. Saint-Rémy is otherworldly and strangely magical, and when I find Pierre in the cottage preparing breakfast I tell him that I think if we can just stay here forever everything is going to turn out okay.

His eyes light up, and he embraces me. And for just a moment, I can breathe again.

BUT WE CANNOT STAY IN SAINT-RÉMY. OUR LAB CALLS TO US, and we have classes to teach. In the fall we are back in Paris, but I am so heavy with the baby and exhaustion and worry that I take a short leave from teaching my classes in Sèvres. Still, every day, I am in the lab, working. The months go slowly: four, then five, then six, then seven. Each one like an experiment. I hold my breath to see if I will make it through, if the results will be good.

In the middle of November, Bronia shows up at our door one evening, unannounced. She is paler than I remember her; thinner. Zakopane has not been as kind to her as I would’ve expected, once. Not Zakopane, though. Life. And death.

“Moja mała siostrzyczka,” she says, embracing me. Her Polish shocks me. It has been too long since I have heard it regularly, since I have spoken it. “I did not want you to have this baby without me,” she says. She puts her hand on my belly, doctor and sister-mother. But maybe Bronia needs a sister-mother too. I wonder if she is here to see for herself that good things can happen to us, too, that children can live still, even once we have seen them die. Or maybe she is here because she is worried it will happen again, and she knows I cannot survive it another time, on my own.

I cling to her, so happy she is here, no matter what her reason. “Everything is terrible,” I admit to her in a way I can’t admit to Pierre. His leg pains have returned even worse since the summer, and he is busy with his students. And he is worried how much longer we can put off a trip to Sweden, and with writing the